In addition to providing safety areas for personnel, wire mesh enclosures are commonly used to provide additional security for the storage of valuable tools and equipment. Wire mesh enclosures are typically constructed from wire mesh panels placed together to form walls. Rigid reinforcement members are used to frame the wall panels and hold them together. The assembled wire mesh walls are typically secured to pre-existing walls and/or floors by flanged fittings and/or reinforcement posts. Wire mesh enclosures may also have wire mesh panel ceilings for three-dimensional protection.
One difficulty with the assembly of known wire mesh enclosures is the requirement of two or more workers to properly align the panels and attach the framing members. Often, the wire mesh panels are stacked horizontally, requiring at least two people to balance them while they are framed and secured to a reinforcement post. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,839,834 to Goddard. Stacking of long panels, one on top of the other, inherently requires the frequent periodic placement of anchor posts to provide sufficient rigidity to the enclosure walls. Conventionally, the posts are located between the ends of adjacent panels. The posts are positioned coplanar with the panels, defining a wall of an enclosure. Construction of such an enclosure requires the efforts of at least two workmen. Construction of the enclosure is further complicated if the enclosure has to be moved or adjusted to accommodate obstacles or irregularities in the floor interfering with the placement of anchor posts at regular intervals. Further, the requirement of a great number of individual wire mesh panels and solid framing pieces and fasteners to be combined together weakens the security of the enclosure. The chances of a breach in the security enclosure increase with the number of parts used. Moreover, such systems are inherently expensive to produce and assemble, since they require many different parts to be fabricated, shipped and stored as well as substantial workman time to construct.
There is a need for an inexpensive mesh security enclosure offering greater security, having fewer connectable parts to produce, ship, and store, having increased flexibility regarding the placement of the anchor posts, and requiring only one person to assemble in a short time. The present invention satisfies this need.